ESPN Great Outdoor Games 2001
In May of 2001, I received a letter from the GREAT OUTDOOR GAMES inviting me to participate in the ESPN games being held in Lake Placid, NY in mid-July of 2001. It seems that they needed a golden and I was competing at that time with AFC Wherley’s Sour Mash WCX OS. I believe I was the only woman competing and the only golden. There were 12 dogs and 12 handlers. It was then an elimination with the weakest performer being eliminated after each round.
I am little fuzzy on the details but will tell you as much as I can remember about it.
The coordinator matched me up in the first round with a friend of his. His friend was to run 1st. The rest of the contestants and I were in a tent, where we could not watch the test. I heard the guns go off and shortly after that I heard the owner handling his dog. I figured that I should be able to do better than that, since Mash was able to run from my left or right side. I think that all the other dogs were still only left sided.
The test was a very short flyer on land to the left and a much longer dead bird thrown down a channel to the right of the short flyer. Many dogs never even saw the long bird thrown in the channel of water, so they got the flyer, and then had to be handled to long dead bird in the water. I naturally ran Mash from my right side and got the long dead water bird. He returned and easily got the flyer memory bird, so I was invited to the next round. The field was cut to 8 dogs left for next series.
The final test consisted of water marks and a water blind. Mash did fine on the water marks, but I mishandled on the blind and used lots of whistles to get the blind. Jerry Day was competing with his Wonderful Yellow lab: FC AFC Super Sue. They had a very nice series and won the event, Mash received 2nd place, Gene and Slim were 3rd. Slim was a titled Black Lab – I can’t remember Slim’s registered name, but he was a very competitive dog in Field Trials at that time.
That is all for now.
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